“Turn out the lights, the party’s overthey say that all good things must end.”

Fortunately, this isn’t the end. We’re just getting started on making the SCQP the best QP on the circuit.

This year has brought an increase in the number of logs submitted – with a month to go to the submission deadline (Oct. 21), we’re at 150 logs submitted vs 90 total logs submitted last year. The SCQP Committee was hoping for an increase in activity, but 50% increase was something of a surprise.

Speaking of the SCQP Steering Committee, the core “Gang of Four” (Dave Edmonds – WN4AFP, Kevan Nason – N4XL, Alan Fitzsimmons – W4ANT and Tom Francis – W1TEF/4) got together and came up with a random drawing prize – a BBQ dinner for two from Maurice’s Piggy Park donated to the SCQP. The drawing rules were simple – just send in your log within 24 hours of the end of the QSO Party – that’s it. The winner was Tom Goodman, AI4DB of Jackson, TN. This random drawing appears to have gone well as there were a considerable number of 24 hour entries to randomize. A lot of terrific comments concerning the BBQ dinner came from Soapbox and qsoconnection posts – enough positive comments that expansion of this random drawing is a very good possibility.

This year brought not only changes in rules, awards and scoring, but in our overall approach to promoting and advancing the SCQP into the upper tier of high quality QSO Parties. Dave Edmonds established a Yahoo forum (qsoparty connection) which quickly became important to all state events for announcements, information and QP related ideas. Dave also developed new features/content and maintains our website (scqso.com) to make it one of the best in the “industry” Tom Francis built a Facebook page for the SCQP which almost hit 100”likes”. Alan Fitzsimmons designed and developed a presentation on contesting for beginners while Kevan Nason became the group conscious keeping everybody on track and offering advice and counsel. The Committee even put on a “roadshow” traveling around the state to clubs presenting the new, improved SCQP with a Power Point presentation created by Gil Huggins, KS4YX.

Our host club, Columbia Amateur Radio Club, put their 500 bonus point station W4CAE on the air from the brand new Sandy Run EOC in Calhoun County. The CARC team was a combination of experienced and inexperienced – Doug White, W8NYK and Mike Wieber N4BQQ were CARC’s experienced crew and worked twenty meter phone. Steve Dornburg, W4SJD and Earl Dean, KM4SJY were the “newbie” crew and did an outstanding job all day on 40 meters. The new team had a great time and did a terrific job fending off net cops, frequency raiders and the usual number of jammers and other annoyances. The SCQP Steering Committee wants to thank Bill Minikiewicz, W4FSV and Dave Chojnacki, W4DMC Calhoun County Emergency Managers for their help with the facility, use of their FT-950 and antenna setup.

The Committee also received tremendous support from the Swamp Fox Contest Group, South Carolina’s statewide contest club. The Swamp Foxers put WW4SF on the air from various locations around the state as a 350 point bonus station. It seemed that WW4SF was anywhere and everywhere on the bands during the event. The SCQP also received outstanding support from mobiles, N4FP,/m W4RWL/m, N4LDL/m (with new ham Tom Grim – KM4AEF), NC8N/m, N4IQ/m (multi-multi mobile with AC4Q/m), AD4Z/m.

So now it’s on to settling the awards, getting them out to the recipients. This year, award winners will have a choice – a plaque to hang on the wall or a special 2015 SCQP coffee cup with callsign and category dyed right into the ceramic. Dishwasher proof.

This year’s party may be over, but we’re not going to call it a day – there’s more to come.

]]>http://scqso.com/2015/10/2015-scqp-news-update/feed/01290The All New, 2015 South Carolina QSO Party is almost here….http://scqso.com/2015/05/the-all-new-2015-south-carolina-qso-party-is-almost-here/
http://scqso.com/2015/05/the-all-new-2015-south-carolina-qso-party-is-almost-here/#respondThu, 28 May 2015 00:12:06 +0000http://scqso.com/?p=678

The SCQP Organizing and Competition Committee has completed it’s revamp of the SCQP rules and has posted the new rules (http://scqso.com/rules/). The net result is that the scoring system is now more in line with other state QP’s.

This year promises to be one of the best we’ve had in South Carolina. To encourage In-State participation, we’ve expanded the awards. We’ve also doubled the points for SSB, CW and Digital for In-State (2/4/4 respectively) QSOs with Out-Of-State stations.

To encourage Out-Of-State stations to participate, we’ve added something really exciting – two, count ’em two, high value Bonus Stations. The Columbia Amateur Radio Club who is the event sponsor will participate as W4CAE which will be valued at 500 points.
The Swamp Fox Contest Group, a state wide contest club, will participate as WW4SF which will be worth 350 points. See the Rules for a complete explanation of the Bonus Station points system.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the new SCQP is Team competition. Any group of 3 or more amateurs who participate in the SCQP can qualify for a Team award. These “Teams” are a unique award and must be declared in the Cabrillo 3.0 scoring file to be eligible. Top points will be the qualifier for the award. Each “Team” participant will receive a certificate celebrating their achievement as a Team.

Scott Davis, N3FJP (N3FJP contest software) and John Bednarz, K3CT (N1MM+) have revised their software to accommodate the new rules. The SCQP Committee recommends downloading the latest versions and test their software prior to the event to ensure all works as designed.

The Committee thanks all those who participated in the revision and updating process.

Well the 2014 SCQP is in the books and the fineal scores have been posted. This year was a record year for the SCQP. We had 90 entries (nearly all of which were electronic this year!) with over 5,000 QSO’s contained in those logs and nearly 1,800 unique callsigns. We missed activating all counties this year by three, missing Hampton, Jasper, and Oconee.

A special thanks to the SCQP Committee for their support. 73 and we hope to hear you again next year for the 2015 SCQP.

The big day is almost here! You can see a list of Announced Operations and we now have a spotting page dedicated to the SCQP, thanks to KB4QQJ and K2RFP. Thanks to WN4AFP for taking the lead on getting this setup for us.

Remember to call CQ and/or look for other SC stations around the suggested frequencies:

SSB: 1.865, 3,810, 7.190, 14.250, 21.300, 28.450, and 50.135

CW: 1.815, 3.545, 7.045, 14.045, 21.045, 28.045, and 50.095

Digital operations for RTTY and PSK should be located within the accepted band areas but do try and avoid running contest ops directly on the main PSK “watering holes”. Consider moving up the band 500-1000 Hz for these ops.

After the recent success of the W1AW/4 SC operation (30,000 QSO’s, 26 operators, all modes), we are now in preparation for the 2014 South Carolina QSO Party. The W1AW/4 SC event proved that South Carolina is a wanted commodity in both the DX world and in the WAS and County hunts. It also proved that South Carolina has very accomplished DX’ers and Contesters.

Based on last year’s statistics and the amateur radio operator counts, we have several counties that are rare commodities and just waiting for rover stations to hand out Qs. Allendale, McCormick and Williamsburg are just three of the counties with less than 50 hams and are on the high priority list for county hunters. The actual county/operator counts can be found on the SC Counties Page.

2013 was a great success surpassing 2012 both in the number of operators, rover stations and QSO counts. 44 out of 46 counties activated and two rover stations running 1,200 Qs combined. If you are planning on participating as a rover, it would help to get your effort announced at the following URL.

http://scqso.com/announced-operations/

Some helpful hints – while you can’t self-announce on the various clusters, there is nothing to prevent you from announcing other hams on the air from SC. There is also nothing to prevent you when contacting another SC station (and that will happen – SC county hunters need SC too) – ask for a cluster spot. Be sure to thank the other operator for the Q. Take your time if you aren’t used to the hurly burly of contesting. If you work CW, don’t forget the TECH bands on 10 and 40 – I speak from personal experience as a lot of my Qs on 10 meters were in the TECH band. Try to keep the speed down too – I found that 17 wpm was a good pace and easily understandable even for those who aren’t CW oriented.

]]>http://scqso.com/2014/08/2014-scqp-is-coming/feed/0528SC Amateur Operators by Countyhttp://scqso.com/2014/08/sc-amateur-operators-by-county/
http://scqso.com/2014/08/sc-amateur-operators-by-county/#respondThu, 14 Aug 2014 21:38:57 +0000http://scqso.com/?p=514We’ve updated the map showing the number of amateur operators in each South Carolina county. If you’re thinking about operating as a rover, have a look at the map and consider activating some of the “less licensed” counties. You’ll likely be quite popular!

South Carolina Amateur Radio Operators

County

Num Ops

Abbeville

80

Aiken

497

Allendale

16

Anderson

564

Bamberg

36

Barnwell

64

Beaufort

436

Berkeley

614

Calhoun

37

Charleston

1000

Cherokee

176

Chester

116

Chesterfield

149

Clarendon

67

Colleton

120

Darlington

108

Dillon

46

Dorchester

511

Edgefield

85

Fairfield

64

Florence

271

Georgetown

122

Greenville

1443

Greenwood

245

Hampton

32

Horry

632

Jasper

32

Kershaw

184

Lancaster

221

Laurens

194

Lee

28

Lexington

968

McCormick

18

Marion

39

Marlboro

27

Newberry

99

Oconee

377

Orangeburg

156

Pickens

487

Richland

822

Saluda

50

Spartanburg

866

Sumter

302

Union

76

Williamsburg

33

York

1014

Number of South Carolina Amateur Radio operators by county. Note that this list is missing approximately 3% of the total ops in the state since their addresses on file with the FCC were either invalid or were PO Boxes. This data was last updated on August 10, 2014.
]]>http://scqso.com/2014/08/sc-amateur-operators-by-county/feed/05142013 SCQP Resultshttp://scqso.com/2014/08/2013-scqp-results/
http://scqso.com/2014/08/2013-scqp-results/#commentsWed, 13 Aug 2014 01:29:21 +0000http://scqso.com/?p=492

The 2013 Results have been posted and this was a record setting year in terms of logs submitted, QSO’s made, counties activated, and scores earned.

44 of 46 counties were activated which is a marked improvement from the 2012 event. Only Cherokee and McCormick counties were left unactivated. And many of the county activations were thanks to the efforts of the Rover entrants. In fact, our top two rover entries, AA4XX and AD8J, combined for nearly 1,200 Q’s. Not bad for a short contest from a vehicle!